having a shape or form
shaped, formed, configured, conformed, fashioned
having no shape, shapeless
unshaped, formless, amorphous, inchoate, unformed, unfashioned, unconfigured, unconformed
having a usually simple plane shape (lines or curves)
geometric, geometrical
having the same shape or boundaries
coextensive
having a similar form
conforming, similiform, equiform
having a different form
diversiform, variform
having many forms
multiform, multifarious, polymorphic, polymorphous, multiplex, omniform, omnifarious
having a shape with equal sides and angles
regular
not having a shape with equal sides and angles
irregular
having an unconventional or uneven shape
irregular, contorted, misshapen, malformed, deformed, twisted, grotesque
having an axially (or in relation to a central line) balanced shape
symmetrical
having an axially unbalanced shape
asymmetrical, dissymmetrical
more prominent or sizable on one side
one-sided, lop-sided
having the sides reversed (as in a mirror)
heterochiral
producing or characterized by distortion of image or shape (as by unequal magnification in a lens or mirror)
anamorphic
having proper or harmonious dimensions relationally
proportional, proportionate, commensurate, eurythmic, eurhythmic
not having proper dimensions relationally
disproportional, disproportionate, incommensurate
longer in one dimension
elongated, oblong, oblongitudinal, lengthened, extended, stretched, prolongated, elliptical, distended, protracted
shorter in one dimension
shortened, truncated, foreshortened
becoming wider
widening, expanding, broadening, dilating, splayed
becoming narrower
narrowing, tapering, tapered
having or coming to a point
pointed, pronged, spiked, acuate, acuminate, mucronate
straight and uncurved in line
rectilinear, rectilineal, linear, lineal
not straight
crooked, bent, askew, awry, oblique
angled or inclined from the perpendicular
raked
flourish-like curve
curlicue
short wiggly line or scrawl
squiggle
represented in outline only
outlined, outlinear, contoured, delineatory, in profile, silhouetted
having a sharp bend or angle
angular, geniculate, orthometric
standing at a right or 90° (L- or gamma-shaped) angle
upright, perpendicular, normal, orthogonal, rectangular, orthometric
having a less than right angle
acute-angled
having three acute angles
triquetrous
having a greater than perpendicular angle
obtuse-angled
having an acute or obtuse (or non-right) angle
oblique-angled, obliquangular
angle greater than 180°
reflex angle
being an angle formed by two planes
dihedral
bent abruptly
geniculate, inflexed, intorted
bent abruptly backward
retroflex, cacuminal
having short and sharp vee-like turns
zigzag, staggered, chevroned, cringle-crangle
having a shape formed by lines rather than by curves (hence having angles)
angular
having a curve or curves (roundness or rondure)
curvilinear, curved, curvate, bowed, curviform, arcing, arciform, flexuous
slightly curved
curvulate
curved upward
upcurved, upturned, arched, arcuate, vaulted, concamerated
curved downward
downcurved, downturned, decurved, decurvate
curved forward
procurved
curved backward
recurved, recurvate
curved inward
incurved, incurvate, involute, hooked, aduncous
curved outward
excurved, excurvate
curving back toward itself
hooked, crooked
curved around farther than a semicircle
gibbous
curved up and around and closed or almost closed
looped
describing a curve that is bold or elongated
sweeping
describing a series of reverse curves
whiplash
curving or arcing (two curved lines) to a point
cusped
curving to a central point with a “dip” (contraflexure) inward on either side of the apex
ogival
making a perfect closed curve (two dimensions)
circular, round, rounded, ringlike, annular, cycloid, cycloidal
flat and circular
discoid
hollowed inward
concave, bowl-like, basin-like, crater-like, dished, sunken, depressed
rounded and bulging outward
convex, protuberant, gibbous, cupped, cupriform, cambered
concave on one side and convex on the other
concavo-convex, convexo-concave
more curved on the concave than on the convex side
concavo-convex
more curved on the convex than on the concave side
convexo-concave
concave on two or both sides
biconcave
convex on two or both sides
biconvex, amphicyrtic
having a common center
concentric
circular in three dimensions or ball-like
round, spherical, spheral, globular, globose, orbicular, orb-like, globate, rotund, spheriform, bombous, conglobate
nearly round
obrotund
like a half-circle
semicircular, hemicyclic
like a half-moon
semilunar, demilune
round but wider in the middle or flattened at the top
oblate
round but longer vertically (as along a polar axis)
prolate
more or less round
spheroidal, ellipsoidal
egg-shaped
ooid, oval, ovoid, ovaliform, oviform, elliptical, elliptic, ellipsoidal
ovoid with the wider end up
obovoid
showing coils or twists
convoluted, convolved, whorled
winding (as if around a pole) in shape
spiral, helical, gyral, heliciform, sirulate, cochleate, corkscrew, tortile, curlicue
spiral or shaped like an inverted cone
turbinate
having numerous turns or bends
bending, winding, twisting, tortuous, sinuous, serpentine, meandering, anfractuous, waving, wavy, undulant, undulating
like a complex or confusing network
maze-like, mazy, labyrinthine, labyrinthian, plexiform
having or in the form of connecting links
chain-like, festooned, catenary, catenate, concatenate, concatenated
enclosing (with either straight or curved lines) a space and constituting a figure
closed
not (either straight or curved lines) enclosing a space or constituting a figure
open
making a closed plane figure of straight lines
polygonal
many-sided
multilateral, polygonal
having equal sides
equilateral
having many angles
multiangular, polyangular
being a two-dimensional figure
plane
being a three-dimensional figure
solid
being a solid figure with many sides
polyhedral, polyhedric
being polyhedral with all vertices in two parallel planes
prismatoidal
four-sided plane figure whose opposite sides are parallel and equal
parallelogram
parallelogram with four equal sides
rhombus, rhomb
many-sided with parallelogram sides and the bases or ends parallel and congruent
prismatic
being a polyhedron with six faces, all of which are parallelograms parallel to the opposite face
parallelepipedal
being a parallelepiped with rhombuses for faces
rhombohedral
having two sides
bilateral
having two faces or fronts
bifacial
three-sided
triangular, deltoid, trilateral, wedge-shaped, cuneate, trigonal, cuneiform, trigonous
triangular with unequal sides
scalene
triangular with two equal sides
isosceles
triangular with equal sides
equilateral
triangular inversely
obcuneate, obdeltoid
being a three-dimensional pointed figure with a base and triangles (usually four or three) for sides
pyramidal
inversely pyramidal
obpyramidal
being a triangular (with three upright sides) pyramid
tetrahedral
having a 90° arc or being a quarter of a circle
quadrantal
having four sides and four angles
quadrilateral, quadrangular, quadrangled, tetragonal
four-sided with all right angles and equal sides
square, foursquare, quadrate
four-sided with all right angles (right-angled parallelogram)
rectangular
having the shape of a narrow rectangle (as a gemstone)
baguette
four-sided with opposite sides parallel and equal
parallelogrammatic
four-sided with two sides parallel
trapezoidal, antiparallelogrammatic
four-sided (parallelogram) with equal but non-right-angled sides (or not a square)
rhombic, rhombical
four-sided (parallelogram) with unequal non-right-angled sides
rhomboid
somewhat like a rhomboid figure
rhomboidal
four-sided with no parallel sides
trapeziform, trapezial
four-sided with two equal acute and two equal obtuse angles (or a long rhomboid figure with the diagonal perpendicular to the horizontal)
diamond, lozenge-shaped
solid with six square faces
cubic
somewhat cubic in shape
cuboid, cuboidal
having an evenly extended or elongated round shape
cylindrical, columnar, columnal, pillar-like, shaft-like
narrowly cylindrical
tubular, tubulate
more or less cylindrical but tapering at one or both ends
terete
being a rounded figure (with a circular base) that tapers upward to a point
conical, conic, funnel-shaped
somewhat conical
conoid, conoidal
conical with the pointed end below
obconic
like two opposite-pointing cones having the same base
biconical
having all angles equal
equiangular
being a four-sided (and -angled) plane figure (polygon)
quadrangular, tetrangular
being a five-sided plane figure
pentagonal, pentangular
being a six-sided plane figure
hexagonal, sexangular, sexagonal
being a seven-sided plane figure
heptagonal
being an eight-sided plane figure
octagonal, octangular
being a nine-sided plane figure
nonagonal
being a ten-sided plane figure
decagonal
being a twelve-sided plane figure
dodecagonal
being a (three-dimensional) polyhedron with three faces
trihedral
being a polyhedron with four faces
tetrahedral
being a polyhedron with five faces
pentahedral
being a polyhedron with six faces
hexahedral
being a polyhedron with seven faces
heptahedral
being a polyhedron with eight faces
octahedral
being a polyhedron with twelve faces
dodecahedral
being a polyhedron with twenty faces
icosahedral
being a polyhedron with twenty-four faces
icositetrahedral
picture-like as a representational form
glyphic, pictographic, hieroglyphic
signifying an idea, concept, or thing but not a particular word or phrase for it
ideogrammatic, ideographic
signifying a word
logogrammatic, logographic
PARTICULAR SHAPES OR LIKENESSES
acorn-shaped
glandiform, glanduliform
almond-shaped
amygdaloid, amygdaliform
alphabet-like
alphabetiform
amoeba-shaped
amoebiform, amoeboid
antenna-shaped
antenniform
apple-shaped
maliform, pomiform
apse-shaped
apsidal
arched or bowed
arcuate, bandy
arch-shaped
arciform
arm-shaped
brachial
arrowhead-shaped
sagittate, sagittiform
arrowhead-shaped (with flaring barbs)
hastate
awl-shaped
subulate, subulated, subuliform
ax- or cleaver-shaped
dolabriform, dolabrate, securiform, axiniform
bag- or pouch-shaped
sacciform, scrotiform, bursiform
ball-shaped
conglobulate
bark-like
corticiform
barley-grain-shaped
hordeiform
barrel-shaped
dolioform
basin-shaped
pelviform
basket-shaped (small basket)
corbiculate
beak-shaped
rostate, rhamphoid, rostriform
bean-shaped
fabiform, fabaceous
beard-shaped
barbate
bell-shaped
campaniform, campaniliform, campanular, campanulate, campanulous, caliciform
berry-shaped
baccate, bacciform
bill-shaped
rostriform, rostate, rhamphoid
bladder- or flask-shaped
ampullaceous, ampulliform, lageniform, utriculate, utriculoid
boat- or canoe-shaped
navicular, naviculiform, naviform, scaphoid, cymbiform, nautiform, hysterioid, hysteriform
bonnet- or miter-shaped
mitrate, mitriform
bowed or arched
arcuate, bandy
bowl-shaped
crateriform, parabolic
brain-like
cerebriform
branched
furcal, furcate
branched slightly
furcellate
brush-shaped
muscariform, scopiform, scopulate, scopuliform, aspergilliform
bubble-like
bulliform
buckler (or round shield)-shaped
scutate, clypeate
bud-like
gemmiform
bulb-shaped
bulbiform, bulbous
buttocks-like
natiform
cactus-shaped
cactiform
canal-like
canaliform
canoe- or boat-shaped
navicular, naviculiform, naviform, scaphoid, cymbiform, nautiform, hysterioid, hysteriform
cat-shaped
feliform
caterpillar-shaped
eruciform
catkin-shaped
amentiform
cavity-like
aveoliform
cell-like
celliform
chain-like
catenary, catenoid, catenular, catenulate
chisel-shaped
scalpriform
chisel-shaped (primitive)
celtiform
cigar-shaped
terete
claw- or nail-shaped
unguiform
claw- or pincer-shaped
cheliform
cleaver- or ax-shaped
dolabriform, dolabrate, securiform, axiniform
cloud-shaped
nubiform
clover-leaf-like
trifoliate, trifoliated, trefoil
club-shaped
clavate, claviform
club-shaped inversely
obclavate
cobweb-like
cortinate
coin-shaped
nummiform, nummular
column-like
columnar, basaltiform, columniform
column-like (small column)
columelliform
comb-shaped or toothed
pectinate
combs-like (series of combs)
cardiform
cone-shaped
conical, coniform, strobile
cord- or rope-like
funiform
cowlike
vaccine (rare)
crab-shaped
cancriform
crater-like
crateriform
crescent-shaped
meniscal, meniscate, meniscoid, menisciform, lunate, falcate, falcicular, falciculate, drepaniform, drepanoid, sickle-shaped, bicorn, bicornuate, bicornuous, half-moon-shaped, crescentiform, crescentic, demilune, semilunar
crescent-shaped (small crescent)
lunulate
crest-shaped
cristiform
cross-shaped
cruciate, cruciform
crown-shaped
coroniform
cube-shaped
cubiform
cucumber-shaped
cucumiform
cumulus-cloud-like
cumuliform
cup-shaped
scyphate, scyphiform, cupulate, cupuliform, cyathiform, calicular, caliculate, calathiform, pocilliform, poculiform
curl-like
cirriform
cushion-shaped or pad-like
pulvilliform, pulvinate
cylinder-shaped
cylindriform
dart-shaped
belemnoid
delta (Δ)- or wedge-shaped
triangular, sphenic, cuneate, cuneiform
disc-shaped
disciform, discoid
dome-shaped
hemispherical
donut-shaped
toroidal
double- or two-faced
janiform
ear-shaped
auriform, auriculate
eel-shaped
anguilliform
egg-shaped
ooid, oval, ovoid, oviform, ovaliform, elliptical, ellipsoidal
egg-to-pear-like in shape
ovopyriform
embryo-like
embryoniform
erect-phallus-shaped
ithyphallic
eye-shaped
oculiform
fan-shaped
flabellate, flabelliform, rhipidate
feather-like
pinnate, pinniform, penniform, plumiform, pennaceous, plumaceous
fern- or frond-shaped
filiciform
fiddle- or violin-shaped
pandurate
fig-shaped
ficiform, ficicoid, caricous
finger-like
dactyloid, digitate, digitiform
fish-shaped
ichthyic, ichthyoid, ichthyoidal, ichthyomorphic
flame-shaped
flammulated
flask- or bladder-shaped
ampullaceous, ampulliform, lageniform, utriculate, utriculoid
flower-like
floriform, floral
flowerpot-shaped
vasculiform
foot-shaped
pediform, pedate
forceps-like
forcepiform
forked
forficate, furcate
fringe-like
fimbriate, fimbricate, lanciniform
fringed (small fringe)
fimbrillate
frond- or fern-shaped
filiciform
fruit-shaped
fructiform
funnel-shaped
infundibular, infundibuliform, choanoid, funnelform
gill-shaped
branchiform
gland-like
adeniform
grain-like
graniform
granule-like
granuliform
grape-cluster-like
botryose, aciniform
grouped together
agminate
hair-like
piliform, capilliform
hammer-shaped
malleiform
hand-shaped
meniform, palmate
handle-shaped
manubrial, ansate
hat-like
galericulate
headlike at one end
capitate
heart-shaped
cordiform, cordate
heart (inverted)- or spade (cards)-shaped
obcordate, obcordiform
helmet-shaped
galeiform, galeate, cassideous
herring-shaped
harengiform
hinged-joint-like
ginglymoid
honeycomb-like
faviform, faveolate, alveolate
hood-shaped
cucullate, cuculiform
hoof-shaped
ungulate
hook-shaped
ankyroid, ancistroid, aduncate, uncinate, unciform, hamiform
horn-shaped
corniform, cornuted
horseshoe-shaped
hippocrepiform
hourglass-shaped
biconical
insect-like
insectiform
ivy-leaf-shaped
hederiform
jelly-like
gelatiniform
jug-shaped (one handle)
urceiform
keel-shaped
carinate, cariniform
keyhole-shaped
clithridiate
kidney-shaped
reniform, nephroid
kidney-bean-shaped
reniform, nephroid
knob-like at one end
capitellate
knot- or node-shaped
nodiform
ladder-like
scalariform
lambda-shaped (Λ)
lambdoid
lance-head-shaped
lanceolate
lance-shaped
lanciform
lance-shaped inversely
oblanceolate
lattice-like
clathrate, clathroid, clathrose
leaf-shaped
phylliform, foliform, foliate, foliated
leather-bottle-shaped
utriform
lens-shaped (flattened oval)
lenticular, lentiform, lentoid
lentil-shaped
lenticular, lenticuliform, lentiform
lily-shaped
liliform
lip-shaped
labial, labellate, labelloid
lobe-shaped
lobate, lobular, lobiform
loop- or sling-shaped
fundiform
lotus-petal-shaped
lotiform
lyre-shaped
lyriform
miter- or bonnet-shaped
mitrate, mitriform
moon-shaped
luniform
mountain-shaped
montiform
mouth-shaped
oriform
mulberry-shaped
moriform
mummy-like
mummiform
mushroom-shaped
fungiform, agariciform
nail- or claw-shaped
unguiform
narrowing at the top
fastigiate
navel-like
umbiliform, umbiliciform
neck-like
colliform
needle-shaped
aciform, acicular, acerose, aciculate, styloid
netlike
retiform, reticular
nipple-shaped
mammiloid, mammiliform
node- or knot-shaped
nodiform
nose-like
nasiform, nasutiform
nostril-like
nariform
nut-shaped
nuciform
oar- or paddle-shaped
remiform
oat-shaped
aveniform
obelisk-shaped
obeliscoid, obeliskoid
omega-shaped (Ω)
omegoid
oyster-shaped
ostreiform
pad-like or cushion-shaped
pulvilliform, pulvinate
paddle- or oar-shaped
remiform
palm-shaped
palmate, palmiform, palmatiform
pea-shaped
pisiform
pear-shaped
pyriform
pear (upside-down)-shaped
obpyriform
pebble-shaped
calciform, calculiform
pencil-shaped
penciliform
petal-shaped
petaliform
phallus-shaped
phalliform, phallic
pie-shaped
sectoral
pie-shaped with a flat end rather than a point
segmental
pincer- or claw-shaped
cheliform
pipe- or tube-shaped
tubular, tubiform, fistulous, fistular, fistuliform
pitcher-shaped
ascidiform
plant-shaped
phytoform
pod-shaped
leguminose, leguminiform
pointed oval (as a gemstone)
marquise
pouch- or bag-shaped
sacciform, scrotiform, bursiform
prickle-shaped
aculeiform
prop-like
fulciform
pruning-knife-shaped
cultrate, cultriform
pulley-shaped
trochleiform
purse-shaped
bursiform
radial in form
actiniform
ram’s-head-shaped
arietinous
reed-like
calamiform
rice-grain-like
riziform
ring-shaped (or spirally curled)
circinate, cingular, annular
rodlike
virgulate, bacillary, bacilliform, vergiform, baculiform
roof-shaped
tectiform
rope- or cord-like
funiform
rows-of-bricks-like
muriform
S-shaped
sigmoid, sigmoidal, annodated
saddle-shaped
selliform
sandal-shaped
sandaliform
saucer-shaped
pateriform, acetabuliform
sausage-shaped
allantoid, botuliform
scimitar-shaped
acinaciform
scissors-shaped
forciform
shallow-depression-shaped
glenoid
shark-shaped
squaliform, selachian
shell-shaped
conchiform, conchate
shield-shaped
scutate, scutiform, scutatiform, aspidate, elytriform, peltate, clypeate, clypeiform, peltiform
shovel- or spade (implement)-shaped
palaceous
sickle-shaped
meniscal, meniscate, meniscoid, menisciform, lunate, falcate, drepaniform, drepanoid, bicorn
sieve-like
cribriform, cribrose, cribral, cribrate
sling- or loop-shaped
fundiform
slipper-shaped
calceiform, soleiform
snail-shell-shaped
cochleate, cochleiform, soleiform
snake-shaped
colubriform, anguiform, serpentine
spade (cards)- or inverted-heart-shaped
obcordate, obcordiform
spade (implement)- or shovel-shaped
palaceous
spatula-shaped
spatulate
spear-shaped or arrowhead-shaped (with flaring barbs)
hastate
sphere-shaped
spherical, spheriform
spike-shaped
spiciform, spicate
spindle-shaped
fusiform
spine- or thorn-shaped
aculeiform, spiniform
spoon-shaped
cochleariform, spatulate
spread-fingers-like
digitate
stake-shaped
sudiform
stalk-like
stipiform
star-shaped
astroid, actinoid, stellate, stellar, stelliform
star-shaped (small star)
stellular
stemlike
cauliform
stirrup-shaped
stapediform
stone-like (small stone)
lapilliform
strap-shaped
ligulate, lorate
string-of-beads-like
moniliform, monilioid
sword-shaped
gladiate, ensate, ensiform, xiphoid, xiphiiform
tail-like
caudiform
teardrop-shaped
guttiform, lachrimiform, stilliform
tendril-like
pampiniform
tent-shaped
tentiform
thorn- or spine-shaped
aculeiform, spiniform
threadlike
filiform, filose, filariform
tongue-shaped
linguiform
tooth-like
odontoid, dentiform
toothed or comb-shaped
pectinate
top-shaped or top shell-shaped
trochiform
torpedo-shaped
terete
tower-shaped
turriform, pyrgoidal, turrical, turricular
tree-shaped
arboriform, dendritic, dendriform, dendroid, dendritiform
trumpet-shaped
buccinal
tube- or pipe-shaped
tubular, tubiform, fistulous, fistular, fistuliform
turnip-shaped
napiform
turret-shaped
turriculate, turriculated
two- or double-faced
janiform
U-shaped
hyoid, oxbow-like, hippocrepiform, parabolic
upsilon (ϒ)- or Y-shaped
hypsiloid, ypsiliform, hypsiliform
valve-shaped
valviform
violin- or fiddle-shaped
pandurate
vortex-like
vorticiform
wedge- or delta (Δ)-shaped
triangular, sphenic, cuneate, cuneiform, deltoid
wedge-shaped inversely
obcuneate, obdeltoid
wheel-shaped
rotiform, rotate
winglike
aliform
X-shaped
decussate, chiasmal
Y- or upsilon (ϒ)-shaped
hypsiloid, ypsiliform, hypsiliform
figure of the earth
geoid
horizontal figure eight symbolizing infinity or eternity
lemniscate
circle with arrow pointed outward toward the upper right
male symbol, Mars symbol
circle with a suspended cross
female symbol, Venus symbol
seven- or nine-branched (Jewish) candelabrum
menorah
Hebrew symbol of life
chai
Judaic hexagram (intersecting triangles)
Star of David, Magen David, Mogen David, Shield of David
intersecting triangles, one of which is light and one dark
Solomon’s seal
Buddhist or Hindu symbol of the universe, typically a design with a circle enclosing a square or a circle divided into four sections
yin-yang symbol, mandala
loop-topped cross (symbol of life)
ankh, crux ansata, key of life, key of the Nile, looped Tau cross
circle divided vertically by a line with two arms (like a downward vee) from the center to the circle
peace symbol
three loops interlaced into a roughly triangular form
triquetra
Japanese (Shinto) shrine-gate symbol
torii
hooked cross
swastika, gammadion, fylfot, crux gammata
figure with three curved branches or legs from the same center (or a three-armed swastika)
triskelion, triskele, triskelis
five interlocking circles (three above two)
Olympic symbol
flame-shaped symbol
flammulation
almond-shaped object or ornament
mandorla
five-pointed star
pentacle, pentagram, pentalpha
diamond-shaped scale or plate
mascle
triangular or wedge-shaped symbol
delta
moon (first or last quarter) or sickle shape
crescent
three-pronged spear associated with the god of the sea
trident
L-shape
gamma
V or upside-down-V emblem
chevron
two coiled snakes on a winged staff, associated with the Greek god Hermes (medical symbol)
caduceus, kerykeion
human skull (as a symbol of mortality)
death’s-head, memento mori
skull and crossbones (pirate or poison symbol)
Jolly Roger
iris symbol (royal emblem of France)
fleur-de-lis
roselike ornament
rosette, cockade (when worn as an ornament)
upward-pointing three-lobed or three-petaled (trifoliate) floral shape
trefoil, shamrock
four-lobed or four-petaled floral shape
quatrefoil
five-lobed or five-petaled floral shape
cinquefoil
common ornament showing spread leaves or petals
palmette
common ornament showing a radiating floral cluster
anthemion, honeysuckle ornament
common ornament showing sprouting pointed leaves
lotus
common ornament showing shapely “billowing” leaves
acanthus
upright eagle with wings outstretched
spread eagle, heraldic eagle
ceremonial-staff emblem of authority
scepter
sphere with a cross atop it (monarchial symbol)
orb
bundle of rods with a projecting ax blade, borne before magistrates of ancient Rome as an indicator of authority
fasces
sun surrounded by (a representation of) its rays
sunburst
wheel whose spokes project beyond the rim
catherine wheel, spider wheel
map’s circular symbol with N, S, E, and W indicated
compass rose
ornamental oval or somewhat curved frame
cartouche
Egyptian beetle-like symbol or ornament
scarab
stylized asp worn on ancient headdresses
uraeus
symbolic or memorial cluster of weapons or armor
trophy
curved band (often bearing an inscription)
ribbon
thin curling or spiral form like a leafless stem
tendril
finely interlacing curves or floral or animal figures
arabesque
typographic symbols
dingbats
selected keyboard characters used to depict a smiley face or signal the writer’s emotion, attitude, or tone
emoticon
I walked my rented bicycle through the gate to the Boudhanath stupa, turned left, then rode clockwise around the massive white dome. A plastic bag of tangerines dangled from my handlebars, jerking as the bike bounced along the cobblestone road. The wide, circular path surrounding the shrine was an important kora: a devotional path, followed clockwise around a holy mountain or Buddhist monument. The ancient white dome of Boudha itself—symbolic of a lotus, an egg, and/or Buddha’s overturned begging bowl—rests upon a three-tiered plinth. The entire site, viewed from above, is revealed as a giant earthwork: an elaborate geometric mandala.
—JEFF GREENWALD, Snake Lake
The shapes of the letters are remarkably strong, written with expertise and confidence in symmetrical lines. Vertical strokes, both straight and rounded, are penned thickly with bold triangular pennant heads. Horizontal strokes are thin and are frequently used to join letters, sometimes with a slight triangular terminal.
—PETER BROWN, The Book of Kells
Mysticism always gripped the Welsh creative imagination, as we can see from the few Celtic artifacts still extant in the country. There is nothing straightforward to the manner of these objects, nothing right-angled or self-explanatory. They are neither realist in style nor entirely abstractionist—pictures which have evolved into patterns, triangles blurred into rhomboids, ritual combinations of curls and circles which may have some magic meaning, but have been stylized into an art form. When living creatures appear, they are caricature humans, schematic animals, and time and again there emerges the strange triskele, the wavy pattern of connected spirals which seems to have had some arcane fascination for the Celtic mind.
—JAN MORRIS, The Matter of Wales
“I used to play basketball,” he explained.
“You must’ve been pretty good.”
“I wasn’t bad, but all the shoes and balls are Cancer Perks.” He walked toward the TV, where a huge pile of DVDs and video games were arranged into a vague pyramid shape. He bent at the waist and snatched up V for Vendetta. “I was, like, the prototypical white Hoosier kid,” he said. “I was all about resurrecting the lost art of the midrange jumper, but then one day I was shooting free throws—just standing at the foul line at the North Central gym shooting from a rack of balls. All at once, I couldn’t figure out why I was methodically tossing a spherical object through a toroidal object. It seemed like the stupidest thing I could possibly be doing.”
—JOHN GREEN, The Fault in Our Stars
Aulus recommended a mass-attack in diamond formation. The head of the diamond would consist of a single regiment in two waves, each wave eight men deep. Then would follow two regiments marching abreast, in the same formation as the leading one; then three regiments marching abreast. This would be the broadest part of the diamond and here the elephants would be disposed as a covering for each flank. Then would come two regiments, again, and then one. The cavalry and the rest of the infantry would be kept in reserve. Aulus explained that this diamond afforded a protection against charges from the flank; no attack could be made on the flank of the leading regiment without engaging the javelin-fire of the overlapping second line, nor on the second line without engaging the fire of the overlapping third.
—ROBERT GRAVES, Claudius the God
Misha listened, but with a certain ethereal inattention. As I talked, he was twisting and folding a napkin into . . . something. He had lately become a master of origami, the Japanese art of paper folding. He had filled an entire room with his paper menagerie: octagons, tetrahedrons, storks, bugs.
—DAVID REMNICK, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
The pommel in gilt brass was composed of acanthus leaves and swept forward in the French style, the guard fitting into the foremost part which was split resembling the beak of a bird.
—ROBERT WILKINSON-LATHAM, Swords in Color
The body of the machine was small, almost cylindrical, and pointed. Forward and aft on the pointed ends were two small petroleum engines for the screw, and the navigators sat deep in a canoe-like recess, the foremost one steering, and being protected by a low screen with two plate-glass windows, from the blinding rush of air. On either side a monstrous flat framework with a curved front border could be adjusted so as either to lie horizontally or to be tilted upward or down.
—H. G. WELLS, “The Argonauts of the Air,” The Complete Short Stories of H. G. Wells
Weber tried a different approach when he included the subway in his 1915 painting Rush Hour: New York. Showing the height of the daily commute, it is a swirl of solid and transparent planes of color composed of irregularly shaped diamonds, hexagons, and semicircles that rotate around the canvas. The lower half of the composition is devoted to the underground spaces of urban transport with brown arches alluding to the underground tunnels of the subway.
—TRACY FITZPATRICK, Art and the Subway:New York Underground
The stalagmites of Armand are a rather unusual variety—they appear to be made of rounded, irregular, hollow cones, which are concave upwards.
—TONY WALTHAM, Caves
When she’d stepped through to the other side, she turned and found that he was watching her from behind a glass wall. She went right up to it and pressed her face to it, near to his, so near that her eyelashes fluttered on the cold screen between them. He breathed on the glass and a nimbus of condensation billowed between them, and suddenly a fingertip was etching lines, curves, shapes into the mist. Letters.
—MAGGIE O’FARRELL, Instructions for a Heatwave
The Russian defences consisted of a semi-elliptical-shaped fort containing 62 casemates on each of two floors from which heavy guns mounted in the centre could sweep the bay almost at water level. Behind the ellipse, and part of the fort, stood a large horseshoe-shaped work on two floors with casemates armed with heavy guns to flank the landward approaches. In the hills behind lay three round towers, also casemated, their guns commanding the countryside. All the masonry was granite, constructed in polygonal form similar to the method used by the Austrians at Verona.
—QUENTIN HUGHES, Military Architecture
When Hal comes in, Howard is standing at the counter, emptying a medicinal-looking powder into a fishbowl containing a single vermilion fish. The fish is shaped like the end of a shovel and has both eyes on one side of its head; the powder turns the water electric green. The vermilion shovel fish hovers meditatively in the electric green orb, like a bizarre Christmas ornament.
—STACEY D’ERASMO, A Seahorse Year
Volcanic islands generally are circular or elliptical cones or domes, and it is easy to visualize the influence of their shape upon erosion by imagining simple circular cones that lie in seas without waves and on which rain falls uniformly. The consequent rivers that develop on a cone are radial because the slopes of the cone are radial. The side slopes of the river valleys tend to be relatively constant but the longitudinal slopes are steeper in the headwaters than at the shoreline. Thus the valleys of the radial streams are funnel shaped; they are narrow and shallow at the shoreline and spread into great, deep amphitheaters in the interior.
—H. W. MENARD, Islands
The complex tangential and integer-ratio geometries found in most crop circles, even those of 1,000 feet in diameter, are awesomely accurate. The diatonic ratio (the white notes on the piano) has also been detected from triangle, square and hexagon ratios in certain formations, as have fractals and the Fibonacci sequence.
—LUCY PRINGLE, Crop Circles
The great breakthrough, however, was in the development of the medieval Christian labyrinth design. This had eleven rings instead of seven, a characteristic cruciform design, and most significantly, the paths ranged freely through the quadrants, rather than methodically proceeding quarter by quarter in the Roman way. A manuscript in the Vatican dated AD860–2 contains a prototype of this innovatory medieval Christian design, and the tenth-century Montpellier manuscript portrays the design more formally. It was executed in two main forms, circular and octagonal.
—ADRIAN FISHER AND GEORG GERSTER, Labyrinth
A Vexierbild (puzzle-picture) by Schon, a Nuremberg engraver and pupil of Dürer, has been described by Rottinger: of large dimensions (0.44 metre × 0.75 metre) it is formed of four trapezoidal rows in which striped hatchings are continued by landscapes peopled with living figures. Towns and hills, men and animals are reabsorbed and engulfed in a tangle of lines, at first sight inexplicable. But by placing the eyes at the side and very close to the engraving one can see four superimposed heads inside rectilinear frames. Perspective causes the apparent images to disappear and at the same time the hidden outlines to appear.
—JURGIS BALTRUŠAITIS, Anamorphic Art
The ball took place in the fair’s Natatorium, a large building on the Midway devoted to swimming and bathing and equipped with a ballroom and banquet rooms. Bunting of yellow and red hung from the ceiling. The galleries that overlooked the ballroom were outfitted with opera boxes for fair officials and socially prominent families. Burnham had a box, as did Davis and Higinbotham and of course the Palmers. The galleries also had seats and standing room for other paying guests. From railings in front of the boxes hung triangles of silk embroidered with gold arabesques, all glowing with the light of adjacent incandescent bulbs. Its effect was one of indescribable opulence.
—ERIK LARSON, The Devil in the White City
If you draw a small irregular shape on the oblong edge of the pack, every tiny part of that picture will change when you shear the oblong to form a rhomboid. Only the area remains the same; and only the sides, which are straight and parallel, remain straight and parallel. But oceans and continents are not parallelograms!
—DAVID GREENHOOD, Mapping
The Catherine-wheel window, and rude tracery below it, is the only portion clumsily adopted from the Lombards.
—JOHN RUSKIN, “Assisi,” The Lamp of Beauty
Harald Alabaster’s study, or den, was next to Bredely’s small chapel. It was hexagonal in shape, with wood-panelled walls and two deep windows, carved in stone in the Perpendicular style: the ceiling too was carved stone, pale grey-gold in colour, a honey-comb of smaller hexagons.
—A. S. BYATT, “Morpho Eugenia,” Angels and Insects: Two Novellas
If the long sides, given by joining the Station positions, were to be related to the Moon in the same way, the Station positions would need to form not a rectangle, but a parallelogram with corners that were not right angles. Shifting Stonehenge only 50 miles to the north or south would change the required angles by as much as 2°.
—FRED HOYLE, On Stonehenge
Besides the uncial writing on the convex side of the sherd, at the top, painted in dull red on what had once been the lip of the amphora, was the cartouche already mentioned as appearing on the scarabaeus, which we had found in the casket.
—H. RIDER HAGGARD, She
Fixed with cannons that could fire twenty miles, honeycombed with deep tunnels and lateral shafts, Corregidor was stuck like a steel bit in the mouth of Manila Bay. The island was shaped like a tadpole, its squirmy tail pointing off toward Manila, its bulbous head aimed at Bataan. The Rock, it was called. The Impregnable Fortress. The Asian Gibraltar.
—HAMPTON SIDES, Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission
Often the edges bounding a face make up a fairly simple plane figure—a triangle, or a square, or the like. And often the faces bounding the whole crystal make up a corresponding simple solid figure—a cube, a tetrahedron, or an octahedron. . . .
—ALAN HOLDEN AND PHYLIS MORRISON, Crystals and Crystal Growing
Workers fabricated the javelin-like spire in pieces, lifted it into the tower, and riveted it together. A 30-ton crane stood ready. Van Alen waited for a perfectly calm morning. When it came, as the architect watched nervously from the street, the crane lifted the 28-ton needle into place. It took just 30 minutes. With that, Walter Chrysler’s skyscraper topped out at 1,048 feet, taller than the 986-foot Eiffel Tower, then the world’s tallest structure, and more important, taller than anything yet proposed by John Raskob.
—MITCHELL PACELLE, Empire: A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon
These consist of cylindrical cells set together to form a palisade-like layer. . . . Each cell is polygonal in horizontal section; cuboidal cells are square in vertical section, whereas columnar cells are taller than their diameter. Commonly, microvilli are found on the free surface of such cells, providing a large, absorptive area . . . , as in the epithelium of the small intestine (columnar cells with a striated border), the gall bladder (columnar cells with a brush border) and the proximal and distal convoluted tubules of the kidney (large cells with brush borders).
—HENRY GRAY, Gray’s Anatomy, 36th edition (Peter L. Williams and Roger Warwick, eds.)
Piet was by profession a builder, in love with snug right-angled things, and he had grown to love this house, its rectangular low rooms, its baseboards and chair rails molded and beaded by hand, the slender mullions of the windows whose older panes were flecked with oblong bubbles and tinged with lavender, the swept worn brick of the fireplace hearths like entryways into a sooty upward core of time, the attic he had lined with silver insulation paper so it seemed now a vaulted jewel box or an Aladdin’s cave, the solid freshly poured basement that had been a cellar floored with dirt when they had moved in five years ago. He loved how this house welcomed into itself in every season lemony flecked rhomboids of sun whose slow sliding revolved it with the day, like the cabin of a ship on a curving course.
—JOHN UPDIKE, Couples
Eucalyptus trees with their smoky, oily smell grew everywhere, very tall, the boles going far up before sending out a branch. They were untidy trees, with wood soft and weak. They kept losing branches, so that there were great gaps along the trunks. They kept dropping their narrow tan, spear-shaped leaves, which littered the ground under them, and layers of bark fell from them in long strips along with little wooden buttons, brown with crosses carved out of them on one side, powdery blue on the other.
—LYDIA DAVIS, The End of the Story
Immediately on passing through Porta del Popolo the visitor enters a square, Piazza del Popolo. Today it is an oval but at that time it was a long, narrow trapezoid converging toward the gateway and with long garden walls on either side. Facing the city, one saw the three thoroughfares thrusting deep into the town. The two triangular building sites form an effective front with two symmetrical domed churches strongly emphasizing the solid mass of the houses advancing toward the open space of the piazza.
—STEEN EILER RASMUSSEN, Towns and Buildings
This monumental female saviour of his movement was to have carried a torch in one hand, lighting her kindly face, while the other would have supported a globe containing an entire theatre. Her robes would fall away to a great parade-ground where people could disport themselves in gentle diversions amid the scent of orange blossom. The basic idea is not new at all. As the mythographer Marina Warner notes, a Stone Age temple uncovered at Skara Brae on Orkney adopts the “cinquefoil form of a schematic female body, the entrance lies through the birth passage.”
—HUGH ALDERSEY-WILLIAMS, Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body
On the computer-enhanced images they could see a patchwork of sinuous valleys like those found on Mars. There were also areas of grooved terrain, similar to that found by Voyager on the surface of one of Jupiter’s satellites, Ganymede. Elsewhere, the surface of Miranda resembled the cratered highlands of our own Moon, and there were also giant scarps higher than the Grand Canyon. In the centre of the satellite was a large rocky area shaped rather like a chevron, and two multi-ringed features rather like archery targets bracketed it.
—ARTHUR SMITH, Planetary Exploration: Thirty Years of Unmanned Space Probes
It was an almost perfect cone of snow, simple in outline as if a child had drawn it, and impossible to classify as to size, height, or nearness. It was so radiant, so serenely poised, that he wondered for a moment if it were real at all. Then, while he gazed, a tiny puff clouded the edge of the pyramid, giving life to the vision before the faint rumble of the avalanche confirmed it.
—JAMES HILTON, Lost Horizon
Flora was ironing barefooted. Her habit of going without shoes in the house I found somewhat obscene because her feet were childishly shapeless and uncared-for. I thought of Nonie’s visits to her chiropodist to have her long, narrow feet soaked and sanded and the corns on the knobbly joints shaved away and her almond-shaped toenails blunt-cut and buffed to a high pink sheen, though nobody was going to see them but us.
—GAIL GODWIN, Flora
On another sculptured relief, showing the king, in a chariot, hunting lions, his tunic is embroidered with a disk encircled by a ring-border decorated with a palmette design, which contains a pictorial representation of a sacred tree confronted on either side by a priest, and surmounted by a winged solar disk, here a flower-like rosette.
—ARCHIBALD H. CHRISTIE, Pattern Design: An Introduction to the Study of Formal Ornament
There were always subtle differences, but for the most part, a lamb chop tended to maintain its basic shape. That is to say it looked choplike. It had a handle made of bone and a teardrop of meat hugged by a thin rind of fat. Apparently, though, that was too predictable. Order the modern lamb chop, and it’s likely to look no different than your companion’s order of shackled pompano.
—DAVID SEDARIS, Me Talk Pretty One Day
First of all, when you consider the shape of a chickadee’s body, you will notice that it’s round. Whereas a blue jay is elongated, and a nuthatch tapered and slightly flattened, a chickadee is like a little ball. This roundness helps the small bird balance itself in the topsy-turvy positions it assumes while it’s searching for insect eggs on the twigs and outer branches of trees.
—GALE LAWRENCE, A Field Guide to the Familiar: Learning to Observe the Natural World
Marburg is one of family of viruses known as the filoviruses. Marburg was the first filovirus to be discovered. The word filovirus is Latin and means “thread virus.” The filoviruses look alike, as if they are sisters, and they resemble no other virus on earth. While most viruses are ball-shaped particles that look like peppercorns, the thread viruses have been compared to strands of tangled rope, to hair, to worms, to snakes. When they appear in a great flooding mess, as they so often do when they have destroyed a victim, they look like a tub of spaghetti that has been dumped on the floor. Marburg particles sometimes roll up into loops. The loops resemble Cheerios. Marburg is the only ring-shaped virus known.
—RICHARD PRESTON, The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story
Earth flows move slower than debris flows and mudflows. They usually have a spoon-shaped sliding surface with a crescent-shaped cliff at the upper end and a tongue-shaped bulge at the lower end. . . .
—PETER W. BIRKELAND AND EDWIN E. LARSON, Putnam’s Geology
If we look through a window at a mass of buildings, or any external objects, and observe that part of the glass to which each object, line, or point, appears opposite, we find that their apparent situation is very different from their real. We find that horizontal lines sometimes appear oblique, or even perpendicular, that circles, in certain situations, look like ellipses, and squares like trapezoids or parallelograms.
—JACOB BIGELOW, The Useful Arts: Considered in Connexion with the Applications of Science
Two of the most famous, long landmarks of Manhattan are the Flatiron Building, erected in 1902, and the Times Building (recently remodeled as the Allied Chemical Building), in 1904. Both have odd, trapezoidal floor plans, dictated by the pie-shaped real-estate slices Broadway strews along its diagonal path as it crosses Manhattan avenues, Fifth at Twenty-third, site of the Flatiron, and Seventh at Forty-second, site of the Times. The resulting slenderness of the two buildings, plus the absence of scientific data on wind stresses, caused the New York engineers to take special precautions. Triangular “gusset plates” were inserted as braces, four to each joint of horizontal beam and vertical column.
—JOSEPH GIES, Wonders of the Modern World: Thirteen Great Achievements of Modern Engineering
Later, experimenting with small and full-size gliders, he found that setting the wings at a slight dihedral (or shallow V-shaped) angle to each other gave lateral stability, and that a tail plane set behind the main wings was necessary for longitudinal stability.
—The American Heritage History of Flight (Alvin M. Josephy, ed.)
c. Ovoid or circular shape. This type of craft is described as being shaped like an ice cream cone, being rounded at the large end and tapering to a near-point at the other end. They are approximately 30–40 feet long and the thick end diameter is approximately 20 percent of the length. There is an extremely bright light at the pointed end, and this craft usually travels point down. They can appear to be any shape from round to cylindrical, depending upon the angle of observation. Often sightings of this type of craft are elliptical craft seen at an inclined angle or edge-on.
—STANTON FRIEDMAN, Top Secret/Majic: Operation Majestic-12 and the United States Government’s UFO Cover-up
We had crossed the high and relatively level sands which form the base of the Fork, and were entering the labyrinth of detached banks which obstruct the funnel-shaped cavity between the upper and middle prongs. This I knew from the chart.
—ERSKINE CHILDERS, The Riddle of the Sands
A geometric plan of Beaux-Arts derivation organized the main exhibit area into a rond-point system of radiating streets and fanlike segments. Symmetrical axes led to the Fair’s central theme building, the Trylon and Perisphere. The longitudinal central axis of Constitutional Mall extended from the Trylon and Perisphere eastward to the oval Lagoon of Nations and beyond, to the Court of Peace, which was flanked by foreign-sponsored pavilions and terminated by the symmetrical U.S. Government Building. Extending at 45º angles from either side of the Trylon and Perisphere were the Avenue of Patriots and the Avenue of Pioneers, both of which culminated in circular plazas—the former at Bowling Green, before the IRT and BMT entrances, and the latter at Lincoln Square.
—EUGENE A. SANTOMASSO, “The Design of Reason,” Dawn of a New Day: The New York World’s Fair, 1939–1940 (Helen A. Harrison, ed.)
For the structural supports Wright devised dendriform (tree-shaped) columns with elongated tapered shafts carrying broad flat disks. Forming the roof of the secretarial staff room is a forest of these columns, three stories high. . . .
—LELAND M. ROTH, A Concise History of American Architecture
The Old River Control Auxiliary Structure is a rank of seven towers, each buff with a white crown. They are vertical on the upstream side, and they slope toward the Atchafalaya. Therefore, they resemble flying buttresses facing the Mississippi. The towers are separated by six arciform gates, convex to the Mississippi, and hinged in trunnion blocks secured with steel to carom the force of the river into the core of the structure. Lifted by cables, these tainter gates, as they are called, are about as light and graceful as anything could be that has a composite weight of twenty-six hundred tons. Each of them is sixty-two feet wide.
—JOHN MCPHEE, The Control of Nature
At the other end of the series we have the cells of the hive-bee, placed in a double layer: each cell, as is well known, is an hexagonal prism, with the basal edges of its six sides beveled so as to join on to a pyramid, formed of three rhombs.
—CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species
In the evenings Mrs. Chaudhuri sometimes sang to them. Directly she was seated cross-legged on the rush mat, gently supporting the onion-shaped tamboura, she became a different woman; self-assured, holding her bony body gracefully erect, not unlike the way Lady Chatterjee held hers when sitting on a sofa at the DC’s.
—PAUL SCOTT, The Jewel in the Crown
To bring light into the center of the room, a portion of the roof was raised about 4 meters higher than the roof over the side sections; the columns supporting the two sections differed, with bundle papyriform columns used at the side and full-blooming open papyriform columns in a larger size standing along the central aisle.
—DORA P. CROUCH, History of Architecture: From Stonehenge to Skyscrapers
“As you can see, the missile tubes are located forward of the sail instead of aft, as in our subs. The forward diving planes fold into slots in the hull here; ours go on the sail. She has twin screws; ours have one propeller. And finally, her hull is oblate. Instead of being cylindrical like ours, it is flattened out markedly top and bottom.”
—TOM CLANCY, The Hunt for Red October
They were much shorter than any animal he had yet seen on Malacandra, and he gathered that they were bipeds, though the lower limbs were so thick and sausage-like that he hesitated to call them legs. The bodies were a little narrower at the top than at the bottom so as to be very slightly pear-shaped, and the heads were neither round like those of hrossa nor long like those of sorns, but almost square.
—C. S. LEWIS, Out of the Silent Planet
As long ago as 340 B.C. the Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his book On the Heavens, was able to put forward two good arguments for believing that the earth was a round sphere rather than a flat plate. First, he realized that eclipses of the moon were caused by the earth coming between the sun and the moon. The earth’s shadow on the moon was always round, which would be true only if the earth was spherical. If the earth had been a flat disk, the shadow would have been elongated and elliptical, unless the eclipse always occurred at a time when the sun was directly under the center of the disk.
—STEPHEN HAWKING, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Deep between two hills was an old quarry, which we were fond of pretending we had discovered. In places the stone stood in vertical shafts, six-sided or eight-sided, the height of stools or pillars. At the center of each of them was a sunburst, a few concentric circles, faint lines the color of rust. These we took to be the ruins of an ancient civilization. If we went up to the top of the quarry, we could ease ourselves a quarter of the way down its face on our toes along a diagonal cranny, till we came to a shallow cave, just deep enough for the two of us to sit in.
—MARILYNNE ROBINSON, Housekeeping
Fish scientists describe white sharks as traumatogenic to humans, meaning capable of causing an injury. The largest grow to nearly twenty feet and weigh five thousand pounds, about the same as a Lincoln Navigator. They are among the most modern looking of animals—eight fins on a tapered cylinder, a Bauhaus fish—yet their form is prehistoric. One woman told me that when she saw a white shark for the first time she felt as if she were seeing a dinosaur rising from the depths.
—ALEC WILKINSON, “Cape Fear: Tracking the Sharks of New England,” The New Yorker, September 9, 2013
He reached the top of the hill; he turned a corner and the town was hidden. Down he looked into a deep valley with a dried up river bed at the bottom. This side and that was covered with small dilapidated houses that had broken stone verandahs where the fruit lay drying, tomato lanes in the garden, and from the gates to the doors a trellis of vines. The late sunlight, deep, golden, lay in the cup of the valley; there was a smell of charcoal in the air. In the gardens the men were cutting grapes. He watched a man standing in the greenish shade, raising up, holding a black cluster in one hand, taking the knife from his belt, cutting, laying the bunch in a flat boat-shaped basket.
—KATHERINE MANSFIELD, “The Man without a Temperament,” Stories
With the lights out, the desert was gray tufted with black spots of desert growth. Here and there loomed tall columns, and one rocky mass shaped like a pipe organ.
—LOUIS L’AMOUR, The Haunted Mesa
Their discoverers may ambitiously have planned a concentric circle for which the eighty-two Q and R holes were intended, arranged in thirty-eight pairs with an additional six at the north-eastern entrance. But when the last bluestone was unearthed and the countryside scoured no more were to be found. In frustration, the scheme was modified into a less impressive single circle of about fifty-seven stones enclosing an elegant horseshoe of nineteen pillars. Even in the golden age of prehistory there could be blunders. Stonehenge was no exception.
—AUBREY BURL, Great Stone Circles: Fables, Fictions, Facts
Topology studies the properties that remain unchanged when shapes are deformed by twisting or stretching or squeezing. Whether a shape is square or round, large or small, is irrelevant in topology, because stretching can change those properties. Topologists ask whether a shape is connected, whether it has holes, whether it is knotted. They imagine surfaces not just in the one-, two-, and three-dimensional universes of Euclid, but in spaces of many dimensions, impossible to visualize. Topology is geometry on rubber sheets.
—JAMES GLEICK, Chaos: Making a New Science
Under his eyes new cities grew. Mesa Verde, Aztec, Wupatki, Keet Seel. Each built and at the height of its prosperity abandoned until the people were gathered for their last great migration into the desert itself. Into four groups they divided themselves and in four directions they left, making a cross over the land until more hundreds of years passed and they wheeled right, forming a swastika. As this swastika wheeled, they broke into smaller groups, all returning but all moving in circles until the land was a giant’s pattern of moving swastikas and serpentines. A pueblo would live for an instant. Another group would find it and a spiral map of their predecessors’ path and then turn in the opposite direction, one eddy twisting from another, yet always directed to the finally permanent gathering at the center of the world.
—MARTIN CRUZ SMITH, Nightwing
The phone rings on the little chest squeezed between the refrigerator and the swinging door to the dining room, its drawers containing things rarely or never used (owner’s manuals for such broken appliances as the deep-fat fryer whose cord likewise lies hidden deep under a pile of ruffled aprons, a lemon zester, a muddler, a croque-monsieur mold, a set of pastel plastic heart-, spade-, diamond-, and club-shaped cookie cutters, a bartender’s guide called Here’s How bound by rawhide thongs to a pair of wooden covers, etc. etc.).
—KATHRYN DAVIS, Hell
He had been dreaming, and he saw his dream in its exact form. It was, first an emerald. Cut into an octagon with two long sides, it was shaped rather like the plaque at the bottom of a painting. Events within this emerald were circular and never-ending.
—MARK HELPRIN, “The Schreuderspitze,” Ellis Island and Other Stories
In the jargon of his trade, this region was covered by “the semi-permanent Pacific High.” He looked at it malignantly. Then he smiled, for he noticed that the High had today accidentally assumed the shape of a gigantic dog’s head. Rising from the Pacific waters it looked out stupidly across the continent. The blunt nose just touched Denver; the top of the head was in British Columbia. A small circle over southern Idaho supplied an eye; three concentric ovals pointing southwest from the California coast furnished a passable ear.
—GEORGE R. STEWART, Storm
After dinner, I put clean towels on the bed in the guest room. My mother is sitting on the bed. The room has Harold’s minimalist look to it: the twin bed with plain white sheets and white blanket, polished wood floors, a bleached oakwood chair, and nothing on the slanted gray walls.
The only decoration is an odd-looking piece right next to the bed: an end table made out of a slab of unevenly cut marble and thin crisscrosses of black lacquer wood for the legs. My mother puts her handbag on the table and the cylindrical black vase on top starts to wobble. The freesias in the vase quiver.
—AMY TAN, The Joy Luck Club
My instructor, Donald Defler, a gnomish balding man, paced at the front of the lecture hall and flipped on an overhead projector. He pointed to two diagrams that appeared on the wall behind him. They were schematics of the cell reproduction cycle, but to me they just looked like a neon-colored mess of arrows, squares, and circles with words I didn’t understand, like “MPF Triggering a Chain Reaction of Protein Activations.”
—REBECCA SKLOOT, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
All the gold, and stucco ornamentation, the cartouches of pan-pipes and tambourines, the masks of Comedy, and the upholstery in garnet plush were democratic stabs at palatial luxury; these were the palaces of the people.
—ROBERTSON DAVIES, World of Wonders
On the prow of that stone ship in the centre of the strait, and seemingly a part of it, a shaped and geometrical outcrop of the naked rock, stood the pueblo of Malpais. Block above block, each story smaller than the one below, the tall houses rose like stepped and amputated pyramids into the blue sky. At their feet lay a straggle of low buildings, a criss-cross of walls; and on three sides the precipices fell sheer into the plain. A few columns of smoke mounted perpendicularly into the windless air and were lost.
—ALDOUS HUXLEY, Brave New World
But there were other objects of delight and interest claiming his instant attention; there were quaint twisted candlesticks in the shape of snakes, and a teapot fashioned like a china duck, out of whose open beak the tea was supposed to come. And there was a carved sandal-wood box packed tight with aromatic cotton-wool, and between the layers of cotton-wool were little brass figures, hump-necked bulls, and peacocks and goblins, delightful to see and to handle. Less promising in appearance was a large square book with plain black covers. . . .
—SAKI, “The Lumber-Room,” The Complete Saki
Very clever were some of their productions—pasteboard guitars, antique lamps made of old-fashioned butter boats covered with silver paper, gorgeous robes of old cotton, glittering with tin spangles from a pickle factory, and armor covered with the same useful diamond-shaped bits left in sheets when the lids of tin preserve pots were cut out.
—LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, Little Women
“Which Renatus kindly hatched for that occasion,” Burlingame interrupted. “And what’s more he allows his globules both a rectilinear and a rotatory motion. If only the first occurs when the globules smite our retinae, we see white light; if both, we see color. And as if this were not magical enough—mirabile dictu!—when the rotatory motion surpasseth the rectilinear, we see blue; when the reverse, we see red; and when the twain are equal, we see yellow. What fantastical drivel!”
—JOHN BARTH, The Sot-Weed Factor
I cut from a tree a score of long, blunt thorns, tough and black as whalebone, and drove them through a strip of wood in which I had burnt a row of holes to receive them, and made myself a comb, and combed out my long, tangled hair to improve my appearance.
“It is not the tangled condition of your hair,” persisted the voice, “but your eyes, so wild and strange in expression, that show the approach of madness. Make your locks as smooth as you like, and add a garland of those scarlet, star-shaped blossoms hanging from the bush behind you—crown yourself as you crowned old Cla-cla—but the crazed look will remain just the same.”
—W. H. HUDSON, Green Mansions
Building the hive, the workers have the look of embryonic cells organizing a developing tissue; from a distance they are like the viruses inside a cell, running off row after row of symmetrical polygons as though laying down crystals.
—LEWIS THOMAS, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
These 2D beings can explore the geometry of their two-dimensional universe by making measurements on straight lines, triangles, and circles. Their straight lines are the “geodesics” discussed in Chapter 2 . . . : the straightest lines that exist in their two-dimensional universe. In the bottom of their universe’s “bowl,” which we see in Figure 3.2 as a segment of a sphere, their straight lines are segments of great circles like the equator of the Earth or its lines of constant longitude.
—KIP S. THORNE, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy
Quite different from these nests of paper and clay are those of thickly felted vegetable hairs made by large wasps of the genus Apoica. Round or hexagonal in shape, five or six inches in diameter, these nests have the form of an umbrella without a handle or a stalkless mushroom.
—ALEXANDER F. SKUTCH, A Naturalist in Costa Rica: How Movement Shapes Identity
It was in this place of astonishing miniatures that I came upon the lairs of the lions in the sunny sand—ant lions, that is. Small funnel-shaped pits dimpled the sand—inverted cones an inch or two in diameter across the top, tapering to the bottom perhaps an inch deep in the sand.
—VIRGINIA S. EIFERT, Journeys in Green Places: Shores and Woods of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula
Later he stared at his finished work and longed to know if anyone other than Mr. Cromarty would be able to make sense of the miniature circles, dashes, and curlicues that floated freely above the lines with their sudden cruel hooks.
—IAN MCEWAN, The Child in Time
Particles may seem like a Platonic abstraction at first. They are fundamental and indivisible. They have no shape, size, color, or any other macroscopic properties. And any particle of a type will be completely identical and indistinguishable from one of the same type. Quite literally, if you’ve seen one electron, you’ve seen them all.
—DAVE GOLDBERG, The Universe in the Rearview Mirror: How Hidden Symmetries Shape Reality
Probably the best known of the moths are the sphinx or hawk moths, some of which are so large they resemble hummingbirds. The bodies of these moths are relatively stout and torpedo-shaped.
—DAVID F. COSTELLO, The Prairie World: Plants and Animals of the Grassland Sea
But the ends of the “horseshoe” ran into the river which formed the northern boundary—and fourth side—of the plantation. And at the end nearer the house and outbuildings in the middle of the plantation, Leiningen had constructed a dam. By means of the dam, water from the river could be diverted into the ditch.
So, now, by opening the dam, he was able to fling an imposing wall of water, a huge quadrilateral with the river as its base, completely around the plantation, like the moat encircling a medieval city.
—CARL STEPHENSON, “Leiningen versus the Ants,” Great Stories of Suspense and Adventure
Colored red ochre, blue and tan, they paraded along the walls in that peculiar frontal way of Egyptians, with vultures on their palms, sheaves of wheat, water lilies and lutes. They were accompanied by lion, scarabs, owl, oxen and dismembered feet.
—E. L. DOCTOROW, Ragtime
But being accepted one day doesn’t mean one will be welcome the next—the Jews of Buenos Aires couldn’t resist planning for dark times. So atop that modest wall they’d affixed another two meters of wrought-iron fence, each bar with a fleur-de-lis on its end. All those points and barbs four meters up gave that wall an unwelcoming, unclimbable, pants-ripping feel.
—NATHAN ENGLANDER, The Ministry of Special Cases
Kayerts stood still. He looked upwards; the fog rolled low over his head. He looked round like a man who has lost his way; and he saw a dark smudge, a cross-shaped stain, upon the shifting purity of the mist.
—JOSEPH CONRAD, An Outpost of Progress
The room’s one window, too high for a woman not standing on a stool to peer out of, had lozenge panes of leaded glass, thick glass bubbled and warped like bottle bottoms.
—JOHN UPDIKE, The Witches of Eastwick
But at first sight from the Derwent River—from which most museumgoers approach by ferry from downtown Hobart, the capital—MONA looms above like a post-apocalyptic fortress, waffled-concrete walls intersecting with great trapezoidal battlements clad in rusting steel.
—RICHARD FLANAGAN, “Tasmanian Devil,” The New Yorker, January 21, 2013
The rich benignant cigar smoke eddied coolly down his throat; he puffed it out again in rings which breasted the air bravely for a moment; blue, circular—I shall try and get a word alone with Elizabeth to-night, he thought—then began to wobble into hour-glass shapes and taper away; odd shapes they take, he thought.
—VIRGINIA WOOLF, Mrs. Dalloway
The world’s first ballistic missile was the Nazi’s V-2 rocket, designed by German scientists under the leadership of Wernher von Braun. As the first object to be launched above the Earth’s atmosphere, the bullet-shaped, large-finned V-2 (the “V” stands for Vergeltungswaffen, or “Vengeance Weapon”) inspired an entire generation of spaceship illustrations.
—NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier
This miniature world demonstrated how everything was planned, people lived in these modern streamlined curvilinear buildings, each of them accommodating the population of a small town. . . .
—E. L. DOCTOROW, World’s Fair
Directly across the way stood a top-heavy dockhouse, a weatherbeaten cube of pure nineteenth century raised up on out-curving supports for the purpose of enabling elderly ladies to sit out on good afternoons to watch the sailboats leaning at their work—a setting rendered completely other-day and unreal by this thick, moist air.
—JOHN HERSEY, Under the Eye of the Storm